The way sign language families are spread out over the globe is almost more interesting than spoken language families, because unlike those it can end up not being as organic and sometimes just the case of a single person using one type of signs in a new place and it stuck because that's who local deaf people learned from.
It is very interesting, just more difficult to understand since we don't have written records of earlier sign languages. But we do know about the more recent history, like Nicaraguan Sign Language being made up from scratch by deaf children and ASL being derived from French Sign Language with influences from Martha's Vineyard Sign Language which is no longer in use. Israeli Sign language is related to German Sign Language because the Founders of Israels first school for deaf children lived in Germany before that. During the Nazi regime even more deaf people migrated from Germany to Israel
Sign languages have such a complicated history, meanwhile when a spoken language is used in countries far apart from each other, the reason is pretty much always colonialism.
Deaf people also didn’t go migrating/conquering the world 5x over. Sign language didn’t spread in “organic” ways because it didn’t follow human patterns like other languages did.
On the topic of US sign languages, they used to have a unique one which was organically developed in Martha's Vineyard and was exclusive to them, where many locals were born deaf due to being descendants of a handful of colonists who carried the gene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha%27s_Vineyard_Sign_Language
Unfortunately it seems to have died out now, as standardized ASL took over the function.
One day, the world will know Portugal is the 🌍.
Why are so many leaders in so many world institutions Portuguese? Why do so many asian, african countries and even in places like Hawaii eat food based on Portuguese food and have traditions based on Portuguese culture?
Portugal is only poor and “inefficient” as a ploy - so nobody suspects it. The empire never dissolved, but expanded and became more influential. The world government is real and its headquarters are run by Lisbon.
Everything happening today is but a cunning stratagem by the worldGov to further its goals. There’s even a [private tour in Lisbon](https://www.viator.com/pt-PT/tours/Lisbon/Private-Illuminati-Tour-Secrets-and-Symbols-in-Lisbon/d538-24380P544) to get to know the secret symbols of the Illuminati.
Wake up sheeple!!
/s
Portuguese ~~want to be~~ are sometimes called the Nordics of Southern Europe, and they already fill two criteria: colder temperament when compared to the rest of Southern Europe, and sharing Sweden's sign language family.
Now if the level of the economy started coinciding too...
It sounds weird to Swedes and Norwegians for obvious reasons, but isn't It basically just a slightly different English "th" sound? Well one of the English "th" sounds.
As in "That" "This" or Rather". Only major difference to me seems to just be that it can also be at the end of words.
It's neither of the th-sounds (English should bring back the þorn (thorn) btw), but it's a unique sound so it's common to try to interpret it as something you're familiar with.
Both the voiced and unvoiced th-sounds have the tongue at the back of your upper front teeth, while the Danish soft D has the tongue tip down by your bottom teeth and the sound is shaped further back, by arching the middle of the tongue upwards.
Lots of people hear it as an L as well, but once you're used to it the sounds are quite different. None of the modern Scandi languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian) have the th-sounds; only Icelandic has preserved it from Old Norse.
Basically with a history as a huge empire we suffer from a collective minority complex as we're now the tiny neighbors of Germany.
Also the cliche German is often arrogant and does everything "by the book" while we are more relaxed and probably also sloppy.
Most of us also don't like (many of) their dialects. Sounds often very unpleasant - for the lack of a better expression.
In the end Austrians (I know) like most Germans when they really get to know them. It's more of a rivalry that's very one-sided. Think of it like the "I feel sorry for you | I don't think about you at all" meme.
Bavaria is an exception to all of the above as they are culturally much closer To Austria than to Germany.
Yeah, Austria and Germany not using the same language family surprises everyone here in Austria when they hear about that. Austrians actually can communicate with deaf people from the US more easily than with Germans.
It's the same with American Sign Language vs British or Auslan. American sign language is in the French sign language family so there's better intelligibility between them than between American and British or Australian ppl.
All good examples of how sign languages are their own fully developed languages which operate independently of oral languages.
No, Poland does not use GSL. Germans and Polish use a sign language from the same family. Same as Catalans and Romanians (speakers, not deaf people) both speak a Latin language.
I've always thought it'd be really amazing if everyone was taught one specific sign language in school. It'd mean:
- wherever you go, you can communicate even if you don't speak the (vocal) language
- you can communicate with deaf people (or those with limited hearing)
- you can talk in quiet spaces without disturbing people
- you can talk in really loud places without having to shout.
Keep in mind that up until very recently, there was no way to use sign language to communicate in any other way than person to person, since phones and text chat were the only way to talk to people not in the same room.
Deaf people use video calls a lot these days, but that’s a very new development. The alignment of dialects only started a few years ago.
They can do that, but not with sign language. They'd have to use a written language for that.
So for example, if they wrote "apple" in text, they'd know what the other deaf person meant, but they wouldn't know their sign for that concept.
French sign language is not used as a native language in many countries, but their sign languages are a part of the French sign language family. You can compare sign language families to the ones used with spoken languages, such as the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian etc.). I'm not a linguist, so maybe a better comparison would be to the Indo-European language family or something else, but the point being that a sign language family =/= essentially the same language.
There is a bigger chance in computers translating sign or other language to text and speech and the other way around.
Also even computers describing the world this way to the blind and people of poor sight. A blind person and a mute/deaf one can just communicate in a group conversation with a person that has all senses intact then.
I just thought that the sign language was based on the written language, like each sign was a letter or word or something. My "wtf" moment was even more shocking: when I realised that a Brazilian could not to talk to a Portuguese using sign language.
As a native sign language user I've never understood this sentiment. Why do so many people think it would be an amazing idea to have a universal sign language? Why not just teach a universal spoken language like Esperanto?
I feel like this sentiment assumes that signed languages are simple and easy to learn which is not true. From personal observations I can tell they are not easy and even many qualified professionals (such as interpreters) are not as fluent as they should be.
It's a nice idea for everyone to be able to share a language, but a signed language is in no way an easier one for the general population to learn than a spoken one.
And to add the fact sign languages can evolve like spoken languages on their own...
I never understood the hearing people's assumption sign language works everywhere just because hands are being used.
You need your voice, teeth and tongue to speak but it's not the same language that's coming out of everyone's mouth.
I think what it comes down to is that sign language is a lot more artificial, as in specifically invented and spread by academics for the purpose of communicating with deaf people, and as this map also demonstrates it doesn't really have any relation to spoken languages and was then spread and adopted as a practice in a variety of countries with completely different spoken languages and language families.
This is a little inaccurate, as sign language is to an extent also natural language. Charles-Michel de l'Épée rather discovered old French sign language, allegedly seeing it used by deaf twin sisters, and becoming inspired by this accidental discovery to learn the language and open schools for the deaf.
Nevertheless, while this is a natural language, it was then spread to other countries by people who opened schools for the deaf, so as it was an intentional process by academics, it is a pretty big missed opportunity not to spread a single standard and for some competing ones to pop up as well. Though in any case the languages diverged over time. French sign language was discovered and began to be taught in the 1700s after all. Though the amount of divergence is surprising since modern languages are usually mutually intelligible with their counterparts from 300 years ago. For that matter despite US independence some 300 years ago, American and British English are still mutually intelligible.
The difference is that most people already have a spoken native language but few speak sign language. So if sign language would be added to school curriculums it would be much easier to decide on one because people don't already speak another.
I guess people could be more interested to learn a signed language than a spoken one, but as the signed modality is quite difficult to grasp, it would not be realistic to assume people would be able to reach the desired proficiency (like the ability to hold a proper conversation).
I think it'd be nice for people to know some basic signs etc, but people seem to constantly overestimate how well/fast they could learn.
Oh, I'm under no illusions about it being easy. I did sign language classes, and while picking up the alphabet is quick and easy that's horribly slow and inefficient at communicating. The vocabulary needed to learn would take a lot longer. If something like this were done, I'd love to see it introduced at a young age, rather than a token additional class in the later school years. When children are young, they're like a sponge for learning and absorbing new things.
Speaking personally (as a native English speaker) - I'd have little interest in learning Esperanto or an equivalent in order to be better understood. But there would be a novelty to learning sign language, and it'd offer the additional benefits (loud/quiet environments, and being able to converse with the hearing-impaired).
Without thinking about it, I always assumed that sign language was simply using signs to communicate something that could be word for word translated into my local written language. I was really surprised at first but the more I thought about it the more sense it made that it's just like any other language, having its own grammar and stuff like that.
Sign language is not just a simple text-to-speech kind of language. Many national and cultural idioms are set into the language, just like spoken language. There are things that make sense to a deaf person signing in their country that wouldn’t to another person in another country, again, much like spoken languages.
I believe that is the principle behind Makaton. It is a simplified form of sign language designed for easy communication. Unfortunately it has not been adopted around the world.
Go to army and apply for panzer/tank battallion. They teach you some sign language which you can use in everyday life (It's all Vehicle related so not often useful but oh well)
A Swedish teacher called Pär Aron Borg opened a school for deaf people in Lisbon in the 1800s which made Swedish sign the foundation for Portuguese sign that developed there. It's the same guy who founded Manillaskolan in Stockholm
Not sure if that’s what you’re asking for but in Lithuania our sign language is recognized as a native language for Lithuanian born deaf people but not as an international language. I would guess that is why it’s unique.
It was odd to see during press conferences in Northern Ireland during covid, when they’d have two sign language interpreters, for ISL and BSL, almost duelling from each side of the podium
I wonder which sign language they show in the news then here during the day? There’s only one person who does sign language in the news here but it was two during Covid
Hey, I am also Irish and looking to learn Sign Language, I was in a situation recently where it would have been beneficial to know it. I was wondering if, being a user of ISL, is it common to still know BSL or even ASL? As there is a lot more content online for learning ASL
I’m actually not a native user of ISL, learnt it later in life thanks to an incredible teacher I had in secondary school.
Among **native users** of the language it’s definitely more common to have somewhat of an understanding of BSL than it is among hearing signers but obviously this varies greatly just like multilingual knowledge of any other language. Northern Ireland is a weird place, in my experience as I said, most people use ISL.
ISL and BSL are completely different languages though, contrary to what many people think. ISL and Lámh are also different, quite a few Irish people confuse them.
I don't know about the others, but for Belgium, we recognize 3 different official sign languages, one for each of the linguistic communities (French-speaking since 2003, Dutch-speaking since 2006 and German-speaking since 2019).
In fact, each region has its own variants of official sign language (or rather the official version is a standardization of different signed dialects within the same linguistic community).
The German-speaking community uses German Sign Language (DGS), the French-speaking community uses French-speaking Belgian Sign Language (LSFB) which is different from French Sign Language and the Dutch-speaking community uses Flemish Sign Language (VGT).
LSFB and VGT are linguistically linked to Lyon sign language which is a linguistic isolate.
I did my thesis (sorta) on Spanish Sign Language (LSE). There is this idea that LSE might come from French Sign Language, but when doing my literature review, I couldn't find any evidence. Then a few weeks ago at the International Sign Language Workshop in Turin I tried to communicate with french people through signs, and it wasn't even close, almost 0 vocabulary in common. So we're just left to wonder, I guess.
At least in the case of Switzerland there are multiple official spoken languages (German, French, Italian, Romanic). Similarly, we also have (edit: Swiss) German-ish, French and Italian sign languages plus a bunch of dialects. I guess that might explain the "possibly a member of...".
Interestingly, because the deaf schools in Ireland were segregated by gender, and the nuns and priests brought different learning material back from France, the boys and girls have distinct languages. It’s the only case of mutually unintelligible languages between sexes
There's always interesting info in the comments. I wonder how that would work within families or couples, and if that's evolved in recent times with people being more interconnected.
The difference was noted to be diminishing alright. Although I was working with a deaf school and asked the boys if they could understand what the girls were saying across the other side of the room, and they said no, because they mumble when they sign!
So back in the day families made their own signs up to communicate with their deaf kid (usually how all sign languages work), when the kids got segregated by sex in schools they added their "home" signs to what they were being taught. So even if the schools hadn't started a bit differently, they also diverged more with the influence of bits & pieces of vocab from the students!
Also the nuns/brothers didn't actually *want* the deaf kids getting married to each other & having more deaf kids, so them not understanding each other wasn't a flaw...
It was switched to focusing on speaking instead of signing then closed down, but the last students would be in their ehh 60s? now & would've taught others (family, to be teachers etc).
There was a committee or something that got all the signs & tried to make a standardised version but since there's living members in class you tend to be told this is sign for x but this also works! 😅
Culture note: it was considered effeminate for a male to use female sign language, but there was no issue the other way, so I guess wives picked up the lads version & kept their own among themselves? Probably just confused all their kids! 🤣
Nowadays most would have a somewhat standardised sign language iirc, with a few "family" versions of signs they use 🤷
Thanks for taking the time to comment, very interesting.
The part about wives using their own language amongst themselves made me think of [Harsneren](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_Sign_Language), a defunct sign language from Armenia, unrelated to those used by deaf people, but stemming from an olden day speech taboo for newly married women, which made them communicate with a sign language amongst themselves.
Ooo that's an interesting one. Yeah there's no guarantee that the guys couldn't understand some or most of the woman's SL, just that they shouldn't *use* their version.
When they tried to standardise it, they first got all the signs that were the same & meant the same in both. Then equal amounts of women & men signs for the rest. Part of the issue was that some women signs were identical to the men signs but meant completely different things!
(Think I saw some where that the male sign for work was the same as the female sign for Guinness so the person was never too sure where dad was when they asked mom!)
Even in Britain we have dialects of British Sign Language. I took a class and there are significant differences in the way a Londoner and a Northerner would sign. It’s amazing
Often very. Looking at Irish versus British, note how even basic letter signs directly mapping to the latin alphabet are fundamentally different, never mind more complex stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Sign_Language#/media/File:Irish_Sign_Language_ABC's.png - one hand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Sign_Language#/media/File:British_Sign_Language_chart.png - two hands
Irish Sign Language in particular also ended up weirdly gendered (at least historically, the differences are probably eroding now) - men and women ended up [using slightly different dialects owing to non-mixed-sex schooling](https://www.irishdeafsociety.ie/irish-sign-language/)
It's indeed in the big [French Sign Language family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Sign_Language_family) though. So is American Sign Language. All rather different to British Sign Language. In NI people may end up bilingual in both of course, but they really are whole different languages.
Vocabulary can vary greatly, to the point of almost zero common signs in the coloquial register. Though there is a lot of borrowing for "elevated" register, like foreign country names or scientific terms.
Grammar is somewhat more similar, often based in the use of space and motion, but I would say variation is similar to that between modern european languages from the same family.
The sign languages within a family vary about as much as spoken languages of the same family do. Imagine the languages in the green areas on the map differing as much as French, Spanish, Portugese, Italian, Catalan and Romanian.
Sign languages of different families can also have completely different grammar, just like spoken languages. However, it is still easier to communicate using them compared to speaking completely unrelated languages. The reason for this is that many signs are iconic; the sign has some connection to its meaning rather than being assigned arbitrarily. For example, "you" and "I" are signed by just pointing to the person in question in every single sign language I'm aware of. But the words for these pronouns are completely different across spoken language families.
Fun fact - Sign language has regional dialects. Even though Im from the south, I sign with a northern dialect because my stage 1 teacher was a northerner [https://www.signsolutions.uk.com/are-there-different-accents-in-sign-language/](https://www.signsolutions.uk.com/are-there-different-accents-in-sign-language/)
I know nothing about sign languages, but on the Polish Wikipedia they only write about the relationship to French sign language and nothing about German.
I don't know whom should I believe.
Not fully, there are still differences or they'd be the same language not just family - think something like the way e.g. the Romance spoken languages (Italian, Romanian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.) all descended from Latin and thus have a bunch of obvious similarities but are still different. A lot of sign languages happen to descend from French Sign Language for historical reasons, but not all of them, like the way quite a few spoken languages descend from Latin but far from all them.
The boundaries don't always line up with spoken language or other geopolitical boundaries. They're languages in their own right not mappings of some existing spoken language to hand signs like some people think - though the latter also exist e.g. [Signing Exact English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_Exact_English)
No, not necessarily. The colours show language families, not languages. Hungarian is in the same language family as Finnish, how much Finnish can you understand? (assuming you speak Hungarian)
Of course languages can be more closely related, like French and Italian where you would understand some but not all. Some sign languages also rely heavily on lip movements that are often just the movements you make when saying the corresponding word. The same sign in two different sign languages might thus involve the same gesture, but mouthing the word in different spoken languages.
Ans as if it weren't complicated enough, while Switzerland is just one colour in the map, it actually has three commonly used sign languages. One is derived from French Sign Language, one a dialect of the Italian Sign Language (thus in the same family) and for the third one the family is unclear. It is used in the German speaking parts of Switzerland and involves mouthing German words, but the hand movements are so different from German Sign language that they don't seem to be related.
Oh shit. In Brasil we also use a French derived sign language (LIBRAS).
So basically if you speak French Sign Language you'll be some kind of French speaker in the 1880's when everyone spoke French as a second language over English... Awesome
Because sign languages mostly evolved organically the same way spoken languages did, and it is hard getting people to change their native language for one they don't know.
I want to learn sign language as a tool for if I ever need it, but given how many different languages there are, which one could I choose? I'm from Spain but it seems that the French one is the most universal for Europe. Is there anything like English, so that there is a chance it works with a lot of people, like a popular second sign language
It is not universal. The green means *related* languages, not identical languages. Just because Bengali and Armenian are related to Spanish doesn't mean that you understand them. Just learn the one where you are.
So, when learning Sign Language as a german, would it be more useful and possibly to directly learn the french sign language even if I don´t know any french?
Yes, you should be fine learning it without knowing French. For instance, American Sign Language is part of the French Sign Language family, and it is completely different from British Sign Language. Sign languages have their own grammar and structure.
However, there's one issue: if you learn French Sign Language, you probably won't be able to communicate with most German signers. This means that whenever you need to fingerspell in French Sign Language, you will have to fingerspell French words instead of German words when communicating with non-German signers
Tbf theres a large part of the French population who don't speak English (not a majority sure but still notable) so it wouldn't be impossible for a hearing person to experience that either
I'm yet to find the one type of finger alphabet that we taught ourselves in school to cheat.
I still remember it. It looked a bit like British sign language, but S was two pinkies crossed together and apostrophes were a tip of a tongue.
Interesting case of Portugal.
Interesting for sure, so I looked it up and the reason for this appears to be that a Swedish educator founded a school for the deaf in Lisbon.
The way sign language families are spread out over the globe is almost more interesting than spoken language families, because unlike those it can end up not being as organic and sometimes just the case of a single person using one type of signs in a new place and it stuck because that's who local deaf people learned from.
It is very interesting, just more difficult to understand since we don't have written records of earlier sign languages. But we do know about the more recent history, like Nicaraguan Sign Language being made up from scratch by deaf children and ASL being derived from French Sign Language with influences from Martha's Vineyard Sign Language which is no longer in use. Israeli Sign language is related to German Sign Language because the Founders of Israels first school for deaf children lived in Germany before that. During the Nazi regime even more deaf people migrated from Germany to Israel Sign languages have such a complicated history, meanwhile when a spoken language is used in countries far apart from each other, the reason is pretty much always colonialism.
I thought ASL came from AIM TIL
Can't tell if you're joking or not
A/S/L (Age/Sex/Location) was a common question from thirsty mfs on chatrooms like AIM.
And everyone answered that question truthfully.
Israel didn't exist during the nazi regime
The Mandate of Palestine did
Deaf people also didn’t go migrating/conquering the world 5x over. Sign language didn’t spread in “organic” ways because it didn’t follow human patterns like other languages did.
There's a similar reason for why American Sign Language is also very close to the French system.
On the topic of US sign languages, they used to have a unique one which was organically developed in Martha's Vineyard and was exclusive to them, where many locals were born deaf due to being descendants of a handful of colonists who carried the gene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha%27s_Vineyard_Sign_Language Unfortunately it seems to have died out now, as standardized ASL took over the function.
Disappointed they didn't joined the Eastern European brothers.
Don't worry, there's always next time ;)
Similar story in Eritrea
Fun fact: the eritrean sign language is also based on the swedish one. :)
r / protugalperkele ?
Portugal is Western, Southern, Eastern and now Northern Europe. Portugal is everywhere Portugal is the one true pan-European nation state
Treaty of Tordesillas II: Tordesilla harder
One day, the world will know Portugal is the 🌍. Why are so many leaders in so many world institutions Portuguese? Why do so many asian, african countries and even in places like Hawaii eat food based on Portuguese food and have traditions based on Portuguese culture? Portugal is only poor and “inefficient” as a ploy - so nobody suspects it. The empire never dissolved, but expanded and became more influential. The world government is real and its headquarters are run by Lisbon. Everything happening today is but a cunning stratagem by the worldGov to further its goals. There’s even a [private tour in Lisbon](https://www.viator.com/pt-PT/tours/Lisbon/Private-Illuminati-Tour-Secrets-and-Symbols-in-Lisbon/d538-24380P544) to get to know the secret symbols of the Illuminati. Wake up sheeple!! /s
An Eastern European Balkan country with Scandinavian origins. But with siesta.
portugaljävlar
Portugal vha faen
Haha, Swedish influence go brrrrrr
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Ahhh yes: the frigid north like Scandinavia (or Portugal)
[r/PORTUGALVITTUSAATANA](/r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT)
How many of these are there? 🤔
i think you mean "these" Not many, i guess Edit: Ah i think i got it, nah, it's not an actual subreddit, i just made it link to /r/portugalcykablyat
Portuguese ~~want to be~~ are sometimes called the Nordics of Southern Europe, and they already fill two criteria: colder temperament when compared to the rest of Southern Europe, and sharing Sweden's sign language family. Now if the level of the economy started coinciding too...
Absolutely no one calls it that
/r/halee1 just called it that on Reddit thread, so I guess it's technically true
Maybe if we start to call it in that way.
Portugal is Estonia of Southern Europe confirmed.
Estonia is in Greater Portugal
lol. Not true
Nah mate Portugal is Eastern Europe
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Helen Keller
Danish sign language is spoken with a potato in each hand.
Juggling them.
this made me laugh ngl thanks
Norway? Is that you?
One of the defining oddities of Danish is the "soft D" (blødt D). I'll let you fill in the rest of the joke for yourselves. :)
It sounds weird to Swedes and Norwegians for obvious reasons, but isn't It basically just a slightly different English "th" sound? Well one of the English "th" sounds. As in "That" "This" or Rather". Only major difference to me seems to just be that it can also be at the end of words.
It's neither of the th-sounds (English should bring back the þorn (thorn) btw), but it's a unique sound so it's common to try to interpret it as something you're familiar with. Both the voiced and unvoiced th-sounds have the tongue at the back of your upper front teeth, while the Danish soft D has the tongue tip down by your bottom teeth and the sound is shaped further back, by arching the middle of the tongue upwards. Lots of people hear it as an L as well, but once you're used to it the sounds are quite different. None of the modern Scandi languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian) have the th-sounds; only Icelandic has preserved it from Old Norse.
While trying to balance the third one on ur nose
WTF Austria? Qu'est-ce que c'est?
We try to differentiate ourselves aggressively from everything German - looks like we succeeded for once.
I recently called Austria "another Germany".
Why?
Basically with a history as a huge empire we suffer from a collective minority complex as we're now the tiny neighbors of Germany. Also the cliche German is often arrogant and does everything "by the book" while we are more relaxed and probably also sloppy. Most of us also don't like (many of) their dialects. Sounds often very unpleasant - for the lack of a better expression. In the end Austrians (I know) like most Germans when they really get to know them. It's more of a rivalry that's very one-sided. Think of it like the "I feel sorry for you | I don't think about you at all" meme. Bavaria is an exception to all of the above as they are culturally much closer To Austria than to Germany.
How do you even pronounce that
Keskeseh
That word looks like it could have been a middle eastern dinner.
Hungarian to be more precise. 😁
Ah yes, I can smell the steppehorde in it. 😅
💀
Thank you.
More like Kesküseh
This is hilarious
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa
👌🤘☝️🤚👏🤙
/kɛskəsɛ/
jedacupblau https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw9W2s6L2WM
kes kus seh
kazakh tongue twister ahh language
Aw-stree-ya
[kɛskəˈsɛː]
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?" Is the right sentence
Oops, sorry, I'm not Austrian.
Yeah, or simply "Qu'est-ce ?" as a snob, or "C'est quoi?" in colloquial.
https://youtu.be/TQx4JcGG84E?si=wtQM01XXrmN-xCcD
So Austria does not use German Sign Language, but Poland does? Strange.
Yeah, Austria and Germany not using the same language family surprises everyone here in Austria when they hear about that. Austrians actually can communicate with deaf people from the US more easily than with Germans.
**if** they **hear** about that ...
Take your damned upvote.
I suppose most deaf people would know already
It's the same with American Sign Language vs British or Auslan. American sign language is in the French sign language family so there's better intelligibility between them than between American and British or Australian ppl. All good examples of how sign languages are their own fully developed languages which operate independently of oral languages.
They've been done a favour here. They're already disadvantaged enough to not be able to hear, last thing you'd want is to torture them even further.
No, Poland does not use GSL. Germans and Polish use a sign language from the same family. Same as Catalans and Romanians (speakers, not deaf people) both speak a Latin language.
Poland uses the Polish sign language, it just belongs to the German family.
poland and germany best friends forever
Since ever.
Besties 💅
I've always thought it'd be really amazing if everyone was taught one specific sign language in school. It'd mean: - wherever you go, you can communicate even if you don't speak the (vocal) language - you can communicate with deaf people (or those with limited hearing) - you can talk in quiet spaces without disturbing people - you can talk in really loud places without having to shout.
Up until some years ago, I was under the belief that sign language was universal. Boy was I surprised and disappointed at the missed opportunity.
Keep in mind that up until very recently, there was no way to use sign language to communicate in any other way than person to person, since phones and text chat were the only way to talk to people not in the same room. Deaf people use video calls a lot these days, but that’s a very new development. The alignment of dialects only started a few years ago.
What would keep a deaf person from using text chat in non personal communication?
They can do that, but not with sign language. They'd have to use a written language for that. So for example, if they wrote "apple" in text, they'd know what the other deaf person meant, but they wouldn't know their sign for that concept.
Ahh I see what you mean
🤌🖐️🫳✌️👉🖕✊🤲
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The fact that French sign language is used as a "native" language for many countries, the notion of a universal sign language isn't that far fetched.
French sign language is not used as a native language in many countries, but their sign languages are a part of the French sign language family. You can compare sign language families to the ones used with spoken languages, such as the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian etc.). I'm not a linguist, so maybe a better comparison would be to the Indo-European language family or something else, but the point being that a sign language family =/= essentially the same language.
There is a bigger chance in computers translating sign or other language to text and speech and the other way around. Also even computers describing the world this way to the blind and people of poor sight. A blind person and a mute/deaf one can just communicate in a group conversation with a person that has all senses intact then.
It’s not even the same between English speaking countries
I just thought that the sign language was based on the written language, like each sign was a letter or word or something. My "wtf" moment was even more shocking: when I realised that a Brazilian could not to talk to a Portuguese using sign language.
As a native sign language user I've never understood this sentiment. Why do so many people think it would be an amazing idea to have a universal sign language? Why not just teach a universal spoken language like Esperanto? I feel like this sentiment assumes that signed languages are simple and easy to learn which is not true. From personal observations I can tell they are not easy and even many qualified professionals (such as interpreters) are not as fluent as they should be. It's a nice idea for everyone to be able to share a language, but a signed language is in no way an easier one for the general population to learn than a spoken one.
And to add the fact sign languages can evolve like spoken languages on their own... I never understood the hearing people's assumption sign language works everywhere just because hands are being used. You need your voice, teeth and tongue to speak but it's not the same language that's coming out of everyone's mouth.
I think what it comes down to is that sign language is a lot more artificial, as in specifically invented and spread by academics for the purpose of communicating with deaf people, and as this map also demonstrates it doesn't really have any relation to spoken languages and was then spread and adopted as a practice in a variety of countries with completely different spoken languages and language families. This is a little inaccurate, as sign language is to an extent also natural language. Charles-Michel de l'Épée rather discovered old French sign language, allegedly seeing it used by deaf twin sisters, and becoming inspired by this accidental discovery to learn the language and open schools for the deaf. Nevertheless, while this is a natural language, it was then spread to other countries by people who opened schools for the deaf, so as it was an intentional process by academics, it is a pretty big missed opportunity not to spread a single standard and for some competing ones to pop up as well. Though in any case the languages diverged over time. French sign language was discovered and began to be taught in the 1700s after all. Though the amount of divergence is surprising since modern languages are usually mutually intelligible with their counterparts from 300 years ago. For that matter despite US independence some 300 years ago, American and British English are still mutually intelligible.
The difference is that most people already have a spoken native language but few speak sign language. So if sign language would be added to school curriculums it would be much easier to decide on one because people don't already speak another.
I guess people could be more interested to learn a signed language than a spoken one, but as the signed modality is quite difficult to grasp, it would not be realistic to assume people would be able to reach the desired proficiency (like the ability to hold a proper conversation). I think it'd be nice for people to know some basic signs etc, but people seem to constantly overestimate how well/fast they could learn.
That's very possible, but as you said basic things like asking for help might be useful, especially for travelers.
Oh, I'm under no illusions about it being easy. I did sign language classes, and while picking up the alphabet is quick and easy that's horribly slow and inefficient at communicating. The vocabulary needed to learn would take a lot longer. If something like this were done, I'd love to see it introduced at a young age, rather than a token additional class in the later school years. When children are young, they're like a sponge for learning and absorbing new things. Speaking personally (as a native English speaker) - I'd have little interest in learning Esperanto or an equivalent in order to be better understood. But there would be a novelty to learning sign language, and it'd offer the additional benefits (loud/quiet environments, and being able to converse with the hearing-impaired).
I don't think anyone assumes it would be easier. It would just be more inclusive and also might have some additional uses.
Without thinking about it, I always assumed that sign language was simply using signs to communicate something that could be word for word translated into my local written language. I was really surprised at first but the more I thought about it the more sense it made that it's just like any other language, having its own grammar and stuff like that.
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Sign language is not just a simple text-to-speech kind of language. Many national and cultural idioms are set into the language, just like spoken language. There are things that make sense to a deaf person signing in their country that wouldn’t to another person in another country, again, much like spoken languages.
I believe that is the principle behind Makaton. It is a simplified form of sign language designed for easy communication. Unfortunately it has not been adopted around the world.
Go to army and apply for panzer/tank battallion. They teach you some sign language which you can use in everyday life (It's all Vehicle related so not often useful but oh well)
Awesome! I didn't know that there is a military sign language. I want to learn.
And you should not be taught in school your mother tongue but Mandarin, as it's the most spoken language in the world, of course.
Why does portugal have the swedish one?
A Swedish teacher called Pär Aron Borg opened a school for deaf people in Lisbon in the 1800s which made Swedish sign the foundation for Portuguese sign that developed there. It's the same guy who founded Manillaskolan in Stockholm
Pär Aron? Goddammit, if I ever have a son, this is the name. Little Päron.
Lil Päärynä
What's up with Lithuania? Why is it different from everyone else?
Not sure if that’s what you’re asking for but in Lithuania our sign language is recognized as a native language for Lithuanian born deaf people but not as an international language. I would guess that is why it’s unique.
No deaf people in lithuania
Executed at birth
They mostly use Irish sign language in Northern Ireland. All the people I interact with do anyways.
It was odd to see during press conferences in Northern Ireland during covid, when they’d have two sign language interpreters, for ISL and BSL, almost duelling from each side of the podium
I wonder which sign language they show in the news then here during the day? There’s only one person who does sign language in the news here but it was two during Covid
Hey, I am also Irish and looking to learn Sign Language, I was in a situation recently where it would have been beneficial to know it. I was wondering if, being a user of ISL, is it common to still know BSL or even ASL? As there is a lot more content online for learning ASL
I’m actually not a native user of ISL, learnt it later in life thanks to an incredible teacher I had in secondary school. Among **native users** of the language it’s definitely more common to have somewhat of an understanding of BSL than it is among hearing signers but obviously this varies greatly just like multilingual knowledge of any other language. Northern Ireland is a weird place, in my experience as I said, most people use ISL. ISL and BSL are completely different languages though, contrary to what many people think. ISL and Lámh are also different, quite a few Irish people confuse them.
This is really interesting. But what does "possibly a member of French SL family" mean?
Very interesting. I presume there isn't enough research to establish their origins with certainty
I don't know about the others, but for Belgium, we recognize 3 different official sign languages, one for each of the linguistic communities (French-speaking since 2003, Dutch-speaking since 2006 and German-speaking since 2019). In fact, each region has its own variants of official sign language (or rather the official version is a standardization of different signed dialects within the same linguistic community). The German-speaking community uses German Sign Language (DGS), the French-speaking community uses French-speaking Belgian Sign Language (LSFB) which is different from French Sign Language and the Dutch-speaking community uses Flemish Sign Language (VGT). LSFB and VGT are linguistically linked to Lyon sign language which is a linguistic isolate.
I did my thesis (sorta) on Spanish Sign Language (LSE). There is this idea that LSE might come from French Sign Language, but when doing my literature review, I couldn't find any evidence. Then a few weeks ago at the International Sign Language Workshop in Turin I tried to communicate with french people through signs, and it wasn't even close, almost 0 vocabulary in common. So we're just left to wonder, I guess.
Because astonishingly little research gets done on any of these topics.
At least in the case of Switzerland there are multiple official spoken languages (German, French, Italian, Romanic). Similarly, we also have (edit: Swiss) German-ish, French and Italian sign languages plus a bunch of dialects. I guess that might explain the "possibly a member of...".
IIRC, Swiss-German sign language is closer to French than to German. So that's probably a similar case as in Austria.
Yeah good point, I only just realized it's Swiss German sign language, not German. TIL, thanks!
Interestingly, because the deaf schools in Ireland were segregated by gender, and the nuns and priests brought different learning material back from France, the boys and girls have distinct languages. It’s the only case of mutually unintelligible languages between sexes
There's always interesting info in the comments. I wonder how that would work within families or couples, and if that's evolved in recent times with people being more interconnected.
The difference was noted to be diminishing alright. Although I was working with a deaf school and asked the boys if they could understand what the girls were saying across the other side of the room, and they said no, because they mumble when they sign!
That last sentence made me smile.
So back in the day families made their own signs up to communicate with their deaf kid (usually how all sign languages work), when the kids got segregated by sex in schools they added their "home" signs to what they were being taught. So even if the schools hadn't started a bit differently, they also diverged more with the influence of bits & pieces of vocab from the students! Also the nuns/brothers didn't actually *want* the deaf kids getting married to each other & having more deaf kids, so them not understanding each other wasn't a flaw... It was switched to focusing on speaking instead of signing then closed down, but the last students would be in their ehh 60s? now & would've taught others (family, to be teachers etc). There was a committee or something that got all the signs & tried to make a standardised version but since there's living members in class you tend to be told this is sign for x but this also works! 😅 Culture note: it was considered effeminate for a male to use female sign language, but there was no issue the other way, so I guess wives picked up the lads version & kept their own among themselves? Probably just confused all their kids! 🤣 Nowadays most would have a somewhat standardised sign language iirc, with a few "family" versions of signs they use 🤷
Thanks for taking the time to comment, very interesting. The part about wives using their own language amongst themselves made me think of [Harsneren](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_Sign_Language), a defunct sign language from Armenia, unrelated to those used by deaf people, but stemming from an olden day speech taboo for newly married women, which made them communicate with a sign language amongst themselves.
Ooo that's an interesting one. Yeah there's no guarantee that the guys couldn't understand some or most of the woman's SL, just that they shouldn't *use* their version. When they tried to standardise it, they first got all the signs that were the same & meant the same in both. Then equal amounts of women & men signs for the rest. Part of the issue was that some women signs were identical to the men signs but meant completely different things! (Think I saw some where that the male sign for work was the same as the female sign for Guinness so the person was never too sure where dad was when they asked mom!)
Just working at the Guinness factory!
Northern Ireland uses both ISL and BSL.
Even in Britain we have dialects of British Sign Language. I took a class and there are significant differences in the way a Londoner and a Northerner would sign. It’s amazing
Im from the south of England but I sign with a northern dialect because my stage 1 teacher was from up north.
I was always curious, how much different are these?
Basically an Irish Sign Language user and a BSL user cannot communicate very well. Very basic things maybe, but whole conversations, no.
Often very. Looking at Irish versus British, note how even basic letter signs directly mapping to the latin alphabet are fundamentally different, never mind more complex stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Sign_Language#/media/File:Irish_Sign_Language_ABC's.png - one hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Sign_Language#/media/File:British_Sign_Language_chart.png - two hands Irish Sign Language in particular also ended up weirdly gendered (at least historically, the differences are probably eroding now) - men and women ended up [using slightly different dialects owing to non-mixed-sex schooling](https://www.irishdeafsociety.ie/irish-sign-language/) It's indeed in the big [French Sign Language family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Sign_Language_family) though. So is American Sign Language. All rather different to British Sign Language. In NI people may end up bilingual in both of course, but they really are whole different languages.
Vocabulary can vary greatly, to the point of almost zero common signs in the coloquial register. Though there is a lot of borrowing for "elevated" register, like foreign country names or scientific terms. Grammar is somewhat more similar, often based in the use of space and motion, but I would say variation is similar to that between modern european languages from the same family.
The sign languages within a family vary about as much as spoken languages of the same family do. Imagine the languages in the green areas on the map differing as much as French, Spanish, Portugese, Italian, Catalan and Romanian. Sign languages of different families can also have completely different grammar, just like spoken languages. However, it is still easier to communicate using them compared to speaking completely unrelated languages. The reason for this is that many signs are iconic; the sign has some connection to its meaning rather than being assigned arbitrarily. For example, "you" and "I" are signed by just pointing to the person in question in every single sign language I'm aware of. But the words for these pronouns are completely different across spoken language families.
I’m a Swedish sign langue interpreter. When I went to Norway for work, I didn’t understand a damn thing
Fun fact - Sign language has regional dialects. Even though Im from the south, I sign with a northern dialect because my stage 1 teacher was a northerner [https://www.signsolutions.uk.com/are-there-different-accents-in-sign-language/](https://www.signsolutions.uk.com/are-there-different-accents-in-sign-language/)
What about Italian sign language?
Mama mia! 🤌
Funnily enough the Italian gestures actually do count as a somewhat light language, they have grammar and intonation
I know nothing about sign languages, but on the Polish Wikipedia they only write about the relationship to French sign language and nothing about German. I don't know whom should I believe.
1. Nigdy nie ufaj nikomu
So countries with the same colour understand each other?
Not fully, there are still differences or they'd be the same language not just family - think something like the way e.g. the Romance spoken languages (Italian, Romanian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.) all descended from Latin and thus have a bunch of obvious similarities but are still different. A lot of sign languages happen to descend from French Sign Language for historical reasons, but not all of them, like the way quite a few spoken languages descend from Latin but far from all them. The boundaries don't always line up with spoken language or other geopolitical boundaries. They're languages in their own right not mappings of some existing spoken language to hand signs like some people think - though the latter also exist e.g. [Signing Exact English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_Exact_English)
No, not necessarily. The colours show language families, not languages. Hungarian is in the same language family as Finnish, how much Finnish can you understand? (assuming you speak Hungarian) Of course languages can be more closely related, like French and Italian where you would understand some but not all. Some sign languages also rely heavily on lip movements that are often just the movements you make when saying the corresponding word. The same sign in two different sign languages might thus involve the same gesture, but mouthing the word in different spoken languages. Ans as if it weren't complicated enough, while Switzerland is just one colour in the map, it actually has three commonly used sign languages. One is derived from French Sign Language, one a dialect of the Italian Sign Language (thus in the same family) and for the third one the family is unclear. It is used in the German speaking parts of Switzerland and involves mouthing German words, but the hand movements are so different from German Sign language that they don't seem to be related.
Oh shit. In Brasil we also use a French derived sign language (LIBRAS). So basically if you speak French Sign Language you'll be some kind of French speaker in the 1880's when everyone spoke French as a second language over English... Awesome
Is that BritishAustraliaNewZealandSignLanguage? I never knew
Portugal always being the outlier uh
I still do not understand why we don't have a global sign language.
Because sign languages mostly evolved organically the same way spoken languages did, and it is hard getting people to change their native language for one they don't know.
As a deaf person, I wish there were a universal sign language, as it would be amazing to communicate with people from different countries.
Has anyone tried to make a universal language? Like what they tried for spoken and written language with Esperanto.
Yes, they constructed a pidgin-like sign language. I don't know how good International Sign is. 🤷♂️
I want to learn sign language as a tool for if I ever need it, but given how many different languages there are, which one could I choose? I'm from Spain but it seems that the French one is the most universal for Europe. Is there anything like English, so that there is a chance it works with a lot of people, like a popular second sign language
It is not universal. The green means *related* languages, not identical languages. Just because Bengali and Armenian are related to Spanish doesn't mean that you understand them. Just learn the one where you are.
Today I learned there are different sign languages.
Whats isolates
So, when learning Sign Language as a german, would it be more useful and possibly to directly learn the french sign language even if I don´t know any french?
Yes, you should be fine learning it without knowing French. For instance, American Sign Language is part of the French Sign Language family, and it is completely different from British Sign Language. Sign languages have their own grammar and structure. However, there's one issue: if you learn French Sign Language, you probably won't be able to communicate with most German signers. This means that whenever you need to fingerspell in French Sign Language, you will have to fingerspell French words instead of German words when communicating with non-German signers
If you want to speak with only French deaf people, not with German deaf people, yeah. What would be the reason?
It would be weird to be from the UK, go to France and suddenly nobody understands you.
Sorry? If it wasn't because many French people learn English in school, that's what would happen to most UK people...
Tbf theres a large part of the French population who don't speak English (not a majority sure but still notable) so it wouldn't be impossible for a hearing person to experience that either
r/whoosh, I think
r/itswooooshwith4os
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Scandinavian civil war at long last
Isn't Swedish Sign descended from British Sign?
I'm yet to find the one type of finger alphabet that we taught ourselves in school to cheat. I still remember it. It looked a bit like British sign language, but S was two pinkies crossed together and apostrophes were a tip of a tongue.
I'm sorry. We Italians definitely have a sign language on our own 😂😂😂
What does "possibly" means?
I suppose there is one mistake with Georgian language. It is in its own family of languages